Changes and uncertainty are parts of life. As we grow up, we develop the skills needed to cope with the curve balls life lobs at us. These life skills also help us learn to live positive lives and relate with each other.
Having the right set of life skills:
- Helps you develop and foster self-awareness and self-confidence.
- Enables you to work independently or collaborate with others in teams when need be.
- Helps you learn to avoid or manage conflict.
- Gives you the ability to manage your time, finances, etc.
- Helps you to effectively make decisions and solve problems.
- Allows you to take responsibility for your actions.
How Do Life Skills Help Those Battling Addiction?
Those who are struggling with alcoholism and substance abuse either don’t develop these life skills or their ability to adapt, self-manage, and function as productive members of society is severely impaired by their addiction.
When you’re addicted to drugs or alcohol, all your energy and attention go into feeding that addiction. You’re always so focused on reaching the next high that you neglect other aspects of your life. You may neglect to pay your bills, fail to eat healthy meals and you just stop taking care of yourself physically. Your mental health also suffers.
When this happens and your life starts falling apart, you take refuge in your addiction. It becomes a vicious cycle that stunts your personal growth and development.
Even when you’re undergoing treatment for your addiction, failure to develop the right life skills can cause you to fall back on your harmful habits. For instance, as you transition from an Intensive Outpatient Program to an Outpatient Program, you receive less supervision from counselors at the rehab facility. If you haven’t developed the life skills needed to deal with the changes and triggers you’ll encounter as you slowly go back to normal life, you might not be able to withstand the temptation to relapse.
That is why it’s crucial for addiction treatment facilities to incorporate life skills training and development into their treatment programs. This will help those in recovery learn how to navigate life’s ups and downs without relying on drugs or alcohol.
What Life Skills are Taught at the Robert Alexander Center for Recovery?
At the Robert Alexander Addiction Treatment Center, we take a holistic approach to overcoming addiction. This means that we focus on treating the entire individual instead of just treating the symptoms of addiction. We integrate a variety of therapies, including life skills development, into the various addiction recovery programs that we provide at our facility.
When you’re admitted to our rehab facility in Kentucky, you’ll find yourself living in a group therapy environment. You’ll be expected to start working on some life skills including doing your own grocery shopping and cooking. You’ll also be responsible for maintaining your daily schedule and attending all the therapies that are part of your treatment.
We teach our clients life skills that will help them express their needs, make better decisions, and develop a healthy lifestyle both in and out of rehab. Here are some examples of the life skills we focus on:
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Communication skills
Communicating with others is at the heart of our interactions as humans. Unfortunately, addiction diminishes your ability to effectively communicate with those around you. This, in turn, interferes with your ability to build healthy relationships. We help our clients learn or re-learn the skills needed to express their personal needs, set healthy boundaries, and nurture positive relationships.
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Managing difficult emotions
In therapy, we use the acronym HALT to refer to the most common problematic emotions addicts in recovery face i.e. hunger, anger, loneliness, and tiredness. When faced with any of these as well as other uncomfortable emotions, it’s easy for an addict to seek drugs or alcohol as a way of escape. What we do is encourage our clients to find healthier ways of dealing with these emotions, since there’s no way to completely avoid them in life. Stress management.
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Financial management
Money or the lack thereof is often at the center of many conflicts in families and relationships. Addicts often have a problematic relationship with money, often channeling all their cash toward purchasing drugs or alcohol. As part of our life skills training program, we teach our clients to budget and live within that budget as well as how to invest and spend their money wisely instead of making frivolous purchases. Developing a healthy relationship with money is the key to living a positive life.
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Professional skills
Many of those who come to our facility do so after they’ve lost their jobs or have their career in shambles. We help them learn skills that will help them get meaningful work that will, in turn, allow them to support themselves once they’ve been discharged from treatment. This includes skills such as writing great resumes, conducting fruitful job searches, how to properly prepare for and perform in an interview, etc.
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Personal skills
Once addiction takes root, an individual tends to neglect other aspects of their personal lives. They don’t care what they eat, they stop exercising and even fail to take care of their personal hygiene. Right from the start, we encourage our clients to take care of themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally. We teach them to prepare nutritious meals, shop for their groceries, exercise, meditate, and entertain themselves without resorting to alcohol or drugs.
We are Waiting for Your Call
At our addiction treatment facility in Kentucky, we provide individualized treatment plans for all our clients. During the first few individual therapy sessions, our counselors get to know you and this enables them to assess and identify the life skills that you need to complement your treatment.
Our goal at the Robert Alexander Center for Recovery is to reintroduce and reintegrate our clients back into society and our life skills development program is designed to do just that. We aim to see all our clients become healthy, responsible, and productive members of society.
If you’re struggling with addiction and would like help in conquering it and getting your life back, give us a call today. We’re ready to help you.
